Upstate New York

All this attention to the election in the NY-23 district has reminded me of an enjoyable weekend that I spent in upstate New York and I can still remember parts of it. Some call anyplace out of NYC upstate, but this was really upstate and what I still think of as upstate, the Adirondacks.

A friend whose grandparents lived in upstate NY suggested that we go up there for the weekend. As I had a car, my little Corvair, we would drive up in it. We managed to talk our supervisor into letting us have a long weekend, 3 or 4 days, I forget which, by promising to bring back some fish.


Here is a picture of a '64 Corvair similar to the one I had at the time. This one is a little fancier than mine as my Corvair had plain wheels with dog dish hubcaps.


It was about an eight or ten hour drive from Cape Cod. We drove thru Lake Placid and Saranac Lake to where his grandparents lived. I think he called that place Paul Smith, NY. I know there was a college by the name near there.


Anywho, we did go fishing the next day. We put a rowboat on my car and launched it in a stream. Went upstream and hauled it over a beaver dam into a lake. We did manage to catch a few fish, but they were only hitting one lure. My friend caught a frog and was using that for bait with no luck. When he decided it wasn't working, and released the frog, it started swimming to shore. Just before it reached the shore, there was a big splash and it disappeared.


Another thing we did was some target practice. We had each brought a box of .22 cal. ammunition, which we used in a couple of single shot rifles. A couple of his cousins and their husbands were there also and they had at least 10 times as many .22 cartridges. They were blasting away and not hitting much, whereas we made sure most of our shots hit what we were aiming at. That is the point of target practice after all. Shooting to just burn powder doesn't make much sense.


At night we would go to bars and drink, most of that is fuzzy. One night we went to Rouses Point,NY which is up in the corner where NY, VT and Canada meet. Don't remember much other than that.


We did make it back in time, even tho we got lost in Boston (Damn One-Way Streets). Missed the exit for the Cape and I-90 ended in downtown Boston. When we spotted the Playboy Club, my friend said, "Now I know where we are." After getting our bearings, we got out of Boston and back to the base on the Cape without any more trouble.

Oh Mighty Sun God

Watching Survivor Samoa last week reminded me of something that happened during the summer on Cape Cod. The contestants were complaining about all the rain they were getting. We didn't have rain like that on the Cape, but we did have a long stretch of days without sun, some rain, but mostly overcast and some days just so humid that the sun was just some indistinct blob in the sky.

Anywho, one day a friend of mine, as we were on our way to work said, "Oh Mighty Sun God what have we done wrong. We'll sacrifice a lifer." Still no sun, so on the following day he upped it to two lifers. Nada, and on the third day it was three lifers. Still Nada, so he upped to three lifers and a First Shirt (a senior NCO directly below the Commander in the chain of command). That day the sun came out and afterwards we always said that in order to get what you want you have to throw in a First Shirt as that was the clincher.

Good Eats, Not!!

The food in the chow halls was not very good. I may have gained ten pounds in basic, but that was only because I was eating three meals a day. Before I went in the military I was too busy partying and running around to eat regularly. Anywho, like I said the food in the chow halls wasn't very good and I ate a lot at the BX cafeteria and snack bars on base and had pizzas and other stuff off-base. After I made E-4 I was able to go on 'separate rats' (separate rations) which gave me about forty bucks (whatever they figured it cost for a months worth of meals in the chow hall) a month to eat on and meant if I were to eat at the chow hall, I would have to pay for the meal as I no longer had a meal pass. When I was at Dow Airplane Patch, I used to go for midnight chow fairly often. You had to get a pass from the CQ in the barracks and the chow hall started serving around 10 pm or 10:30 pm. It was basically breakfast and sometimes even the grits were good. Which meant I ate breakfast before going to bed and didn't bother eating in the morning before going to work. I could sleep later.

At K.I. I would go off-base to get pasties (rhymes with nasty, not hasty which would be a nipple covering and they are usually not edible).

As for the meals I ate at the BX, they were mostly hamburgers, chili dogs and other stuff on that order. I still remember the chili on the chili dogs as being super thick from sitting under the lights all day. On the weekends I would get a pizza or something off-base. That is basically how I survived while in the military. When I was at Otis on Cape Cod, I only ate one meal in the chow hall and that was while very hungover on Xmas day because no other place was open on that day. (And that was not the last time I had trouble finding a place to eat on Xmas day. While in Anniston, AL in the mid-80's I had the same problem.)

For my last meal at Otis, I was searching for any and all loose change to come up with enough money to get something at the snack bar because I was broke until I got my final paycheck the next morning along with my discharge.

Cars

Besides the truck and the car I bought for the drivetrain to put in the truck, I also bought a '54 Ford ragtop while stationed on Cape Cod. I had no intention of buying another vehicle, but I was made an offer I couldn't refuse. The guy that followed me from K.I. to Otis had bought a '54 ragtop in addition to the truck he had. Long story short, he got transferred and asked if I wanted the ragtop. I told him I had enough vehicles at the time. He said that he had just bought a new 6 volt battery for the car and would sell the car to me for what the battery cost. (I seem to remember it was only $5 or $10.) I really didn't need or want another car, but I bought it from him just to help him out as he was leaving. I think I fired it up a couple of times and even drove it with the top down once a few blocks on base, but mostly it sat outside of the Auto Hobby Shop on base.

This picture is of a restored car that I found on the intratubes, and not of the car I had.

The car I had was drivable but I didn't have the time to do anything with it. Later on my last day at Otis when I was leaving to go home I gave the car away. I had just cashed my final check at the Credit Union and met one of my co-workers and tossed him the keys and said, "It's parked at the Auto Hobby Shop. It's all yours." Because of the "Early Out" (that's another tale) I had a lots of running around and other things to do in a short period of time and didn't even think about trying to sell the car until it was too late to do anything.

Danny Kaye's

One of the first places I was introduced to on Cape Cod was a place called Danny Kaye's. When I first saw the name on the sign, I thought it belonged to the comedian Danny Kaye. Turned out it was the first names of the couple that owned the restaurant. It was an Italian-American restaurant and I was told that we all were to order our own pizzas. When the pizzas arrived, they were on large serving trays and were oval. I had never seen anything other than a round pizza before and it was cut into diamonds, lots of diamonds. The first time there I wasn't able to eat the entire pizza, maybe there were too many pieces, or maybe it was the fact that I had had a snack shortly before heading out to the restaurant. Almost every payday several of us would go to Danny Kaye's for pizza and after that first time, I was able to eat all of the pizza.

Twenty One years later I was working on Cape Cod at Otis and went looking for my favorite pizza place. The building was still there, but now it was a Chinese restaurant.

Trucks

Like I said before I drove out to Cape Cod in my little Corvair. After driving around there for awhile, I realized that the Corvair was not a good vehicle to drive there. Other cars were always pulling out in front of me, seems like a little white car is almost invisible or just poses no threat to other drivers. That is why I bought the pickup in the picture below. Drivers on Cape Cod had a bad habit of creeping out until they were far enough out into the traffic lane that someone would stop to let them in. Whenever I spotted someone trying to creep out into traffic, I would downshift the truck to second gear and step on the gas. If they still kept coming, I would drift to the right and usually they would back up. Summertime was a miserable time to drive on Cape Cod and that was forty years ago. One town just off-base had about 10,000 year-round residents, on some summer weekends like July 4th it would swell to around 100,000.

Notice the broom sticking up behind the cab. A buddy said every truck had to have a broom and he stuck one there.

The other truck in this picture belonged to another guy in the shop. He followed me out to Cape Cod from K.I. and when he saw my truck, he bought one like it. Mine was a '56 Chevy and his was a '57 Chevy. He had a new Cougar that he bought with his re-enlistment bonus and had already wrecked it once while at K.I. and after seeing the traffic on Cape Cod, didn't want to take a chance on wrecking his car again.

I did a lot of work on the truck. It had a worn-out transmission and the rearend was shot. One of the wheel bearings in the rearend wore out and it was so bad that the axle wore a hole thru the top of the rearend housing. I bought a '56 Chevy car and put the entire drive chain from the car into the truck. There were some exciting moments during the process from getting the car to the base to finishing the project. While towing the car to the base, my buddy popped the clutch and started the car. It had a carburetor from a Caddy and the gas pedal linkage worked the opposite of the Chevy and after it started and he let up on the gas, it revved up and was running wide open. This happened to be on the bridge on to Cape Cod and there was a traffic circle at the bottom end of the bridge. He shut it down and didn't try again the rest of the way to the base.

Looking back, hindsight being 20/20, I might have been better off getting rid of the truck and keeping the car, but for some reason I preferred the truck over the car.

Psychic Car Repair

I drove the Corvair out to Cape Cod. One day it wouldn't start and after checking things out, I figured out that it wasn't getting any gas to the carburetors. I thought it was the fuel pump and got another one from an auto parts store. After changing the pump, it still wouldn't start. Finally found the problem, there was a piece of rubber hose in the gas line where you could disconnect it to remove the engine. It was underneath the engine at the front end of the engine. For some reason I didn't feel like making another trip to the parts store, so I just wrapped it with electrical tape and was able to get it running. Some time later, it might have been a couple of weeks later, I was driving around the area and the car sputtered and died. It would not restart, so I just pushed in the clutch and coasted into a parking lot. While the car was still moving, I said "I think the rubber hose in the gas line at the front of the engine let go." There was an auto parts store within sight, so we hiked to it and I bought some rubber hose to replace the piece on the gas line. After making the repair and we were on our way, one of the guys with me was amazed that I had diagnosed the problem before the car had even stopped moving. I never did let him know that I knew what the problem was because of the half-assed fix I had done before.